HOME
COVER STORY
CALENDAR
SHOWTIMES
DINING GUIDE

NEWS
MUSIC
FILM
BOOKS
THEATRE
ART

CLASSIFIEDS
PERSONALS

CONTACT
FEEDBACK
ADVERTISE

spins

Spins
by Bill Adams
The Dresden Dolls No Virginia Because the release of their Punk Rock Cabaret live DVD got them exposed to new audiences unfamiliar with the idea that Kurt Weil might still have a place in rock n’ roll (the last band to give him his proper due was The Doors when they covered “Alabama Song”), the pressure must have been on Dresden Dolls to have another record out as fast as possible in order to capitalize on the interest. So appears No Virginia…, an album that’s part new material with thhe rest filled out by “a collection of unheard treasures from the Vault of The Punk Rock Cabaret taken from the Yes Virginia Sessions.” Sceptical? Don’t be while collections of this type do admittedly earn the title of ‘Odds and Sods collections’ for a reason, No, Virginia… brims with nervous energy and is held together by constant patterns as well as artistic growth. Even so, ‘unheard’ might be overstating things a bit. Anyone familiar with the Dolls will recognize many of these songs because they’ve seen play in live sets in a number of cases and those that haven’t will still seem familiar. “Lonesome Organist Rapes Page Turner” was on the Live At The Roundhouse DVD’s set list of course, but others including “Dear Jenny” and “The Gardener” that make their first appearance here could easily have fit in on the band’s prior releases and show up here fully formed. It’s actually jaw–dropping that songs as good as “Sorry Bunch,” “Night Renaissance” and “The Mouse And The Model” simply didn’t make the cut to appear on the records for which they were originally recorded and, at the same time, they appear here as a testament to the strength of the songs that did. The Dresden Dolls do find time to grow beyond the cabaret with “The Kill” and “Boston” which both bear hints of new wave and may be a taste of things to come from either singer Amanda Palmer (who it has been announced has a solo record forthcoming) or Dresden Dolls in the future. This record doesn’t feel elegiac though at no point do the proceedings drag or give the impression that the future pf Dresden Dolls is in question, it just feels like the best play to make when the band has some attention focused on them. Me First And The Gimme Gimmes Have Another Ball! To quote Magnum P.I., “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right…” other than the obvious point that this is a collection of covers, there’s something incredibly familiar about the material that comprises Have Another Ball. To be fair, I actually had to review this album twice because I thought it was a reissue; I have fond memories of blazing up the highway in a burned out, angelic blue Toyota Tercel to parts unknown with many of these Gimme Gimme-ized versions of the contempo–casual elite (including Paul Simon, John Denver, Billy Joel, Elton John, Carole King Neil Diamond and more) replete with a more sneering punk rock treatment as a soundtrack. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there was a grain of truth in the sales pitch that Have Another Ball is ‘the lost album’ from Me First And The Gimme Gimmes; while I had heard them before on CD–R comps, none of these tracks had ever seen proper release on an album. On singles? Sure. Online? Of course but never as an album. Recorded around the period of Me First And The Gimme Gimmes’ debut, Have A Ball, Have Another Ball is the definitive document for the band’s vision. The re–furbished versions of “The Boxer,” “Cominig To America” and “Country Roads” now brim with the crunch of raucous, half–in–the–bag punk rockers out to cut loose and have a laugh; Jake Jackson and Joey Cape’s guitars the things that have always punctuated and played straight man to the band’s arrangements is crisp and jagged as a hyperactive buzz saw here. At the same time, the rhythm section manned by Dave (Just Dave) on drums and “Fat” Mike Burkett on bass really tries to make these covers sound like genuine attempts rather than tongue in cheek tomfoolery. That’s the single most appealing thing about Have Another Ball; if these covers didn’t have a sort of rubber–faced legitimacy, they’d come off as nothing more than a series of two–dimensional jokes that would have worn long thin by now. But they don’t. Have Another Ball is the punch line fully realized for a gag that never stops giving. The Notwist The Devil, You + Me Over the last couple of years, somehow ‘indie rock’ (which, for those keeping score, started out as a colloquial contraction for ‘independent rock’) became less a term for how and on what scale music was distributed and more a point of definition for a particular sound. Once, ’indie rock’ was music made on a tiny budget with tiny or modest ambitionsin mind but, now, it is more a term that defines ’tiny music’. Whether ’tiny’ refers to the scope, overall sound or simply the approach to writing that a band takes, ’indie rock’ now implies a small sound and, in that way, The Notwist is the quintessential modern indie band with one important (and incredible) difference: on The Devil, You +Me, The Notwist present tiny music exploded into a panoramic landscape. On their new album, The Notwist start with a very small point and magnify it to discover what gorgeous, lush and unique sounds such a microcosm might yeild that a cursory glance may have missed. In this case, the focal point is Markus Archer’s small, tentative and self–conscious vocals along with his simplistic guitar figures but, from the opening build of “Good Lies,” sparks and animated strands of ambient energy radiate from Archer’s center in the ost evocative and fascinating ways; little burst of electronic sounds – sometimes as brief as a single beep – fly off in unexpected directions, tape loops crest and evaporate and the vapor trails from Andi Habert’s drums and Michael Acher’s bass create a pulse that’s almost biological. It’s not quite alive, but certainly seems as close to sentient as a collection of notes and sounds could be and, from there, the band gets ambitious with the idea. With the “Good Lies” template in place, the band begins to stretch to see what else they can find. Digging deeper into “Where In The World”, for example, unearths string and horn sections as well as electronic drums that simultaneously feel revelatory and incredibly exciting while “Alphabet” sputters along on fractured drum patterns, buzzing electronic feedback and caterwauling electronic guitars. The effects of all these things call to mind Bjork’s work with Matmos (Vespertine) that included a host of found sound generators (walking on gravel and so on) but, unlike Bjork – who rested on top of those sounds and commanded them – Archer presents himself as being the vital center from which all of these sounds spring; like they couldn’t exist without him. His image and voice are always present and the parts only stray far enough tto make sure that the central image isn’t obscured; those stray fibres can stray a long way – there’s no mistaking that – but listeners can’t get lost in the outlying extensions because they always draw back to the focal point. It’s an incredible listening experience; the willing would be well–served to put on a good set of headphones, lay back, relax and fade into the cosmos with this this album. Radiohead The Best Of It’s been said over a dozen times in about fifty thousand markets around the globe, so why not one more? Radiohead fans are strange and rabid creatures – not unlike Pink Floyd fans – that will speak up and scrutinize the minutiae of every move that Radiohead makes. It has to be an incredibly stifling environment to reside in for a group of musicians. That said, when the news came down the pipe that Radiohead was releasing a ‘Best Of’ compilation, of course fans wanted to have a say in what should be included and probably even went so far as to suggest track orders. How much of that ‘advice’ the band took into account is debatable (either the fans have good sense or the band wasn’t listening) because the truth is that The Best Of is every inch of what it claims; these seventeen songs are the best known and most revered in Radiohead’s catalogue. It’s even fantastically put together. Foregoing the conventional chronological or best–selling singles formats, The Best Of aims for a sort of flow between tracks that most comps of this type can’t manage. ‘Greatest Hits’ or not, usually sets like this can’t help but sound like a mixed bag because, over time, a band will change and mature so when individual songs are placed in chronological order, the mix ends up sounding unbalanced and slopped together. Radiohead has solved that problem by arranging these songs so that they compliment each other and build momentum as the disc progresses. On paper, for instance, a series of songs like “No Surprises,” “High And Dry,” “My Iron Lung” and “There There” doesn’t appear to have any rhyme or reason to it at all but with headphones on, the tension in the interplay between them builds to a small climax before “Lucky” functions as a sort of relieving resolution. There are a series of climaxes like this throughout The Best Of and, while those little tensions and climaxes rise and fall, they also fuel an underlying cycle of unease that compounds continually until finally finding resolve in “Everything In Its Right Place.” For a compilation, it’s amazing that the band has been able to orchestrate something so dramatic from seemingly unrelated songs. It’s a remarkably powerful and unexpected set indeed.

.......................